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When Did Hospitality Get So Hostile?


At some restaurants, bread is no longer free, which makes sense, given the cost of quality ingredients, the time invested in baking, and the amount of waste wasted (a concern). environmental concerns, because food that goes to landfills releases greenhouse gases as it decays). Tipping – a tradition that originated in the United States only after the Civil War, partly as an excuse for white bosses to underpay Black employees, as the Pullman Company did on its wagons with Black porters, who in late 1934 were officially paid an average of $16.92 a week for over 73 hours of work — now integrated into the payment system even in stores no table service, like donut shops and coffee carts, with defaults typically starting at 20 percent or higher. It was a cunning tactic, the company dumping labor costs on the customer, who then directed anger at the worker standing there with averted eyes, trapped behind the touchscreen. In an economy where people are constantly being rated and rated, one-star Yelp reviews are used as a weapon to punish restaurant employees for belittling behavior, whether perceived or not. In fact, while bad customers are dismissed through booty videos on social media, in the face of public condemnation. But here again, the playing field is uneven: When a string of nasty Yelp reviews can cause a massive drop in business, public humiliation comes down to individuals, despite though intense, are transient and, except in extreme cases, rarely have lasting financial impact.

Danny Meyer, a restaurant owner in New York, has argued that empathy is essential to hospitality. A bad customer is just a dissatisfied person. In fact, we all have our sorrows, our desires being thwarted. But in the vulnerable hierarchy of the service industry, only a few are allowed to indulge and indulge; others have to thrive. In “The Menu,” the chef distinguishes between “givers” — his employees — and “takers” — diners, swaggers, power, know-it-alls, and hunters. titles, including some who didn’t care much to taste his food by saying they had tasted it. A guest’s sin is to misremember the fish she ate the last time she came to dinner. “Does it matter?” she asked. “That’s important for halibut,” replied Slowik, not on the side of the consumer but on the side of the consumer.

And aren’t we all, at different times, a receiver and a giver, a servant and a servant? The ancient quest for hospitality is based in part on pragmatism: Historically, we have been taught to comfort strangers because one day we might as well be strangers. Or perhaps it’s more instinctive, a memory of our defenseless beginnings: Writer and activist Priya Basil, in “”Be My Guest: Reflections on food, community, and what it means to be generous” (2019), noting that we enter the world as guests, “helpless little creatures who must always have every need met, who for a long time cannot give anything or very little.” Isn’t this the arc of a life, to gradually become aware of the people around us and the labor necessary for us to survive and be happy — the spills are quietly wiped away, awake. come true as if from thin air on the table — and to learn, if we can, to do the same for others?

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